The Encylopedic Museum

In January the UCS Heritage Group will be considering the issue of the Encyclopedic Museum (Monday 14 January 2013, 4.30 pm; UCS Ipswich). The session will be led by Professor David Gill.

The starting point will be the formation of collections in the Encyclopedic Museums. A good place to start is Wilson’s history of the British Museum. Other museums to consider would be the Ashmolean and the Fitzwilliam, or looking further afield the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The debate has been encouraged by James Cuno’s series of writings on the purpose of museums and collecting. (See review article here.)

—. 2005. “Museums, antiquities, cultural property, and the US legal framework for making acquisitions.” In Who owns the past? Cultural policy, cultural property, and the law, edited by K. Fitz Gibbon: 143-57. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press / American Council for Cultural Policy.

—. Editor. 2009. Whose culture? The promise of museums and the debate over antiquities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

de Montebello, P. 2009. “”And what do you propose should be done with those objects?”.” In Whose culture? The promise of museums and the debate over antiquities, edited by J. Cuno: 55-70. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

MacGregor, N. 2009. “To shape the citizens of “that great city, the world”.” In Whose culture? The promise of museums and the debate over antiquities, edited by J. Cuno: 39-54. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Owen, D. I. 2009. “Censoring knowledge: the case for the publication of unprovenanced cuneiform tablets.” In Whose culture? The promise of museums and the debate over antiquities, edited by J. Cuno: 125-42. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Readers may also be interested in views of the Universal Museum from outside the Western world.See inter alia K. OPOKU
IS THE DECLARATION ON THE VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE “UNIVERSAL MUSEUMS” NOW WORTHLESS? COMMENTS
ON IMPERIALIST MUSEOLOGY,

WHOSE “UNIVERSAL MUSEUM”? COMMENTS ON JAMES CUNO’S WHOSE CULTURE?

LOVE THE “UNIVERSAL MUSEUM” AND DESPISE THE OTHERS: COMMENT ON ARTICLE BY TRISTRAM HUNT. ARTICLES AT